She may be the toast of Tinseltown now, but Ellen Page says things could have turned out very different.

The 20-year-old star, who has received an Oscar nomination for her performance as pregnant teenager Juno MacGuff in Juno, says she never intended to go into acting.

“I was in music class when a local casting director came looking for people to audition for a TV movie,” she tells the New York Daily News.

“I had brown hair and was the right age – 10. It was supposed to be one neat little experience and not turn into a series.”

But Ellen, whose TV role later led to parts in independent Canadian films before her break-out role in Hard Candy, reveals she fell in love with it soon after.

“All of a sudden, acting was what I loved to do. I remember falling in love with it when I was 15 or 16. It was fun then, and it’s still incredibly fun. I’ve often thought, ‘What if I’d been sick that day?’ she added.